many,many years ago keith played against my friend,well known pro in a AAA tournament and it was not a pro tour event.Keith was unhappy with the way my friend racked.Keith made him rerack.Keith still did not like it and asked him to rerack again.my friend reracked and did his usual trick.keith caught that and got angry and slapped the rack with his hand like a teachecr spanks a kindergarten child and shouted " rack it again".At that time I wanted to jump into the arena to tackle keith but I controlled myself.Finally my friend racked to the satisfaction of keith.Yes, this is one of the dirty secrets among pros.
Earl never liked the racks by the players from Philippines.
I'm kind of coming late to the party, so to speak, about Keith's experience in professional tournaments.
But I will say this about my brief decade of experience when Keith as a tournament soldier. His break was never his greatest virtue. Where his strength is, and always has been, is his ability to execute shots that others wouldn't even attempt. Keith is a shot maker and has more in his arsenal of shots than most.
When we would attend professional tournaments, all the other players were all scrupulously examining the racks, making their opponents re-rack over and over again. Keith's normal tableside demeanor, however, which annoyed me to no end, was to just let his opponent rack while he sat by, never getting up out of his chair. Most of the regulars on the tournament trail were well aware of this about Keith. I even had a couple players come up to me and offer advice to Keith that he needed to be more cognizant of the racks he was receiving.
I insisted over and over, before, after, and during every single tournament that he check each rack, so much so that I had a signal that I would give him from the rail between games, when I would tap the top of my head, which meant: CHECK THE DAMN RACK, KEITH.
I knew who the rack riggers were, and these rack riggers were well aware that Keith very rarely checked the rack. When Keith racked balls for himself to break, he usually just threw them in there, moved the rack up and down once or twice, and then proceeded to break. When he'd rack for his opponents, he tried to give them as good as rack as he could, but sometimes they would insist that he do it over and over and over and over and over again, to which he complied. Sometimes the TD was called in to rack, since Keith's rack wasn't good enough.
I can vividly remember Johnny Archer objecting to Keith's rack at Turning Stone. Every time Keith would rack, Johnny was standing there, not accepting the rack. Keith finally asked the TD to rack for him. The TD racked, and Johnny didn't like the TD's rack. Finally, after 10 minutes -- yes, 10 frigging minutes -- Keith said to Johnny, "Well, then rack your own." Johnny proceeded to rack his own, and Keith never looked at Johnny's racking for himself.
Make not mistake about it, the players voicing their discontent for a rack is sometimes a sharking mechanism they use to get in the heads of their opponents. Even when they are given good racks, they will voice discontent hoping to give themselves an edge by making their opponent angry.
This pertains to a lot of professional players, not just Johnny, Keith, et al. I can tell you a nice rack-rigging story about Hillbilly and Jeremy Jones at an SBE, but Il'l save it for another time.
